Jochen Rueckert is a jazz drummer, composer, band leader, and Oxford Comma-enthusiast born in Germany in 1975, currently residing in New York City.
Besides a dozen years of touring with his own quartet with Mark Turner, Lage Lund, Mike Moreno, and Matt Penman, Jochen is known for his recent work in Melissa Aldana's as well as Fred Hersch's trios, the mid-2000 Kurt Rosenwinkel New Quartet, Seamus Blake/Chris Cheek's "Reeds Ramble", Nils Wogram's Root 70, a decade of the Marc Copland trio, his electronic music programmed under the alias "Wolff Parkinson White", as well as his series of ebooks aptly titled "Read the Rueckert - travel observations and pictures of hotel rooms".
Jochen's deliberate avoidance of formal music education, albeit initially for budgetary reasons, combined with 30+ years working with some of the greatest musicians all over the world provides a great lack of erudite nonsense in his playing and writing.
He's celebrating his 6th album as a leader, titled "With Best Intentions"

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Kevin Sun is a Chinese-American saxophonist and composer living in New York City. His music has been called “...intense, harmonically virtuosic and compositionally complex" by DownBeat Magazine, and he has released seven albums to date—most recently his new double album, Quartets, in October 2024. He is the founder of Endectomorph Music, a Brooklyn-based label dedicated to creative improvise music that has released over 30 albums since 2015. His previous albums have been released to critical acclaim, including his 2021 tribute to Charlie Parker, <3 Bird, which landed on year-end best-of lists in the Boston Globe, PostGenre, and more.

Sun has also recorded five albums with the ensembles Mute, Earprint, and Great On Paper, and he appears on recordings led by Adam O'Farrill, Jacob Garchik, Dana Saul, Xiongguan Zhang, and Elijah Shiffer. As a sideperson, he has performed with Adam O’Farrill, Frank Carlberg’s Dream Machine, Dan Weiss, John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Yuhan Su, Peter Watrous, and Noah Haidu, among others. Locally, he has performed at venues such as The Jazz Gallery, Joe’s Pub, Smalls Jazz Club, Ornithology Jazz Club, Bar Bayeux, Cornelia Street Café, 55 Bar, Close Up, and the Django.

In addition to performing in the U.S., Sun has performed extensively in China and served as the Artistic Director of the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra from 2018 until 2020, leading performances of the BNCJO at the Blue Note Beijing with guest artists such as Rudresh Mahanthappa, Kris Davis, and Ingrid Jensen. He has been in residence at Lowlands Bar, where he performed weekly from September 2021 through July 2024, and he continues to perform there monthly as of September 2024. In 2021, Sun was named a Finalist for the Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellowship. He plays VENN reeds by D’Addario exclusively and has been a D’Addario Artist since June 2024.

Sun has written liner notes for album releases on ECM, Sunnyside, Cellar Live, Biophilia, and Fresh Sound New Talent, among others. He previously conducted interviews for Jazz Speaks, the official blog of The Jazz Gallery, where he served as blog editor-in-chief from July 2013 to December 2014. Sun holds an M.M. in Jazz Performance from The New England Conservatory of Music and an A.B. in English from Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding senior thesis work. He is the first-ever jazz saxophone performance major to graduate from the five-year Harvard-NEC Dual Degree program, and and he has worked in the Harvard University Music Department as a Teaching Assistant to Professor Vijay Iyer. He studied primarily with Miguel Zenón while at Harvard-NEC, in addition to taking lessons with Billy Hart, Cecil McBee, John McNeil, Donny McCaslin, and Jerry Bergonzi, among others.

Award-winning New Zealand Jazz artist, Hamish Smith, flows with rhythmic inventiveness and a unique groove-centric approach. He has been described by NEA Jazz Master, Todd Barkan, as “a modern marvel - one of the great young bassists in the world”. Currently living in New York, Hamish has quickly become a highly sought-after musician. His career highlights include tours, performances, and/or recordings with artists such as Paquito D’Rivera, Miguel Zenon, Dayna Stephens, Manuel Valera, Yosvany Terry, Benito González, Michael Rodriguez, Elio Villafranca, Diego Urcola and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. Hamish is also a founding member of the collaborative group, Immigrantet, along with Nicola Caminiti and Juan Diego Villalobos.

KEVIN SUN

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Jochen Rueckert Quartet